Concerts

A bunch of storied bygone Denver bands are getting back together for a night of mesmerizing music-making. On Friday, November 15, at the hi-dive, Machine Gun Blues, Red Cloud, Monofog, Red Orange Yellow and Horace Van Vaughan are slated to reconvene to help the beloved South Broadway bar celebrate its…

This band with costumes would be GWAR,” says Victoria Lundy, who plays theremin for the Inactivists, offering one of the most astute assessments that’s been uttered yet regarding Denver’s strangest and most eclectic underground rock band. For a decade now, the Inactivists have amused, confounded, offended and even inspired other…

Katey Laurel has arrived. While she’s always shown potential, on Periscope, she really lives up to that promise. Her voice was amiable enough before, but her material just wasn’t that memorable. Here, though, she shows tremendous growth, singing with greater confidence, which adds heft to the overall affectiveness of her…

With a moniker that means “lucid canvas” in Spanish, the Littleton-based Lucida Tela draws from a varied palette on this self-titled effort. Prog-rock remnants of the band Tryst — some of whose members are now in Lucida Tela — can be heard on cuts like “Temperal Illusion” and the odd-metered…

Ashen Embers’ self-titled debut has the meditative feel of a Rocky Mountain sunset. Chalk it up to the slow tempos, the haunting rounds of slide guitar or the bluesy lyrical plaints — whatever the source, the record offers a strong sense of high altitudes, late-night campfires and small-town calm. That’s…

Essentially Crash’s swan song, Live — recorded at Herman’s Hideaway on St. Patrick’s Day 2013 — captures the raw, crunchy power of the band better than any studio album ever could. And that undoubtedly has to do with the fact that Crash was always best when allowed to follow its…

Since immigrating from Russia in 1992, Ivan Ovchinnikov — better known by his stage name, Scum — has grown into one of the best-selling horrorcore artists in the country, through relentless touring and with Lyrikal Snuff Productions, the label he founded more than a decade ago. In that time, Scum…

GUITAR WOLF @ MARQUIS THEATER | 10/06/13 After Bass Wolf more or less stumbled into place and Drum Wolf sat down behind the kit, Guitar Wolf himself strode on stage and smashed down any unnecessary walls between punk, garage rock, noise rock, R&B, the blues, soul and rockabilly song after…

LOTUS @ RED ROCKS | 10/4/13 Despite predictions of snow all week, the weather stayed calm but frigid at Red Rocks as Lotus performed its show, which had been rescheduled due to the flooding a couple weeks ago. Even though it was cold, all quickly warmed up dancing to the…

EAGLES @ PEPSI CENTER | 10/5/13 The Eagles’ current tour is titled “The History of the Eagles,” and this performance at the Pepsi Center did a great job of living up to that title with side lessons about Linda Ronstadt’s old touring band, the country-rock stylings of Poco in the…

WEDS | FRANK TURNER at OGDEN THEATRE | 10/9/13 Before striking out on his own, Frank Turner spent some time in London’s Million Dead, one of the better post-hardcore bands of the early 2000s. Rather than singing with nuance, as he does now, Turner screamed and yelled in that band,…

FRI | LOTUS at RED ROCKS | 10/4/13 The jazzy electronic quintet Lotus, known for its precisely timed improvisations during live shows, is celebrating its fourteenth year as a group. From incorporating video-game music to performing David Bowie tribute shows and playing Black Sabbath covers, Lotus has figured out how…

Before Get Shot! made its way to Denver for a show at 3 Kings Tavern earlier this week, the members of the Sacramento-based quartet apparently had a little sacrilege to tend to, namely filming their bass player, one miss Laura Lush, diddling herself on the front lawn of the Westboro…

FRI | MOSCA at NORAD | 10/4/13 Many DJs who start off on the drum-and-bass/jungle end of things tend to stay toward the bass-oriented end of spectrum. But while Mosca still incorporates a hefty amount of dub/dancehall/reggae into his sets, he’s primarily known for his underground house and techno sets,…

John Thomas remembers standing stage-side at Red Rocks, staring at a sea of bodies gyrating to the music of Tycho as he warmed up the crowd for Sound Tribe Sector Nine and marveling at the surrealism of the whole experience. “I’m at Red Rocks talking to Gold Panda and Dave…

Justin Furstenfeld, the frontman for Texas rockers Blue October, has turned a corner, both musically and in his personal life. His band’s new album, Sway, is a far cry from 2011’s angst-ridden Any Man in America, which was written while the 37-year-old singer was going through a divorce and a…

The debut album from Saskatoon, which features Paul DeHaven (Paper Bird, Eye and the Arrow) and Jess Webb, has an almost utilitarian quality — and that’s not a bad thing. The tranquil sentimentality and subtle psychedelia of these stretched-out instrumentals would be a nice accompaniment to a languid yoga session…

There’s a bit of stylistic time travel happening on Rock and Roll, Space in Time’s newest release. The keyboards and guitar, for instance, play off one another in a clear nod to the likes of Captain Beyond and Uriah Heep. But instead of merely mining the usual classic-hard-rock territory, these…

On the title track of the Patti Fiasco’s Small Town Lights, which also serves as the album’s opener, the Fort Collins-based quintet starts off fairly tame, with strumming acoustic guitars and a slide resonator guitar that sounds almost like a pedal steel. It’s a bit twangy at first, but in…

For WHITENOISE, his newest release, Sole takes a surprising turn away from his usual far-left political-theory rhymes and gangster-chic production, offering instead a lo-fi, left-field, all-instrumental album. No longer spitting about Paris communes or the prison-industrial complex, he nonetheless gets his point across through overlaid vocal samples and song titles…